


How Katsuki Yuuri beat his fiancé and set the figure skating fandom on fire.

by contrarynondairy



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character's Name Spelled as Viktor, Established Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov, Established Relationship, Implied Sexual Content, Katsuki Yuuri Needs a Hug, M/M, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Social Media, Victor Nikiforov is Extra, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-17
Updated: 2021-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-26 11:46:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30105468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/contrarynondairy/pseuds/contrarynondairy
Summary: Posted on  r/HobbyDrama - [Figure skating] How Katsuki Yuuri beat his fiancé by 0.51 points at the 2017 Grand Prix Final and set the Figure Skating fandom on fire.
Relationships: Katsuki Yuuri & Yuri Plisetsky, Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov
Comments: 9
Kudos: 103





	How Katsuki Yuuri beat his fiancé and set the figure skating fandom on fire.

Posted in r/HobbyDrama -[Figure skating] How Katsuki Yuuri beat his fiancé by 0.51 points at the 2017 Grand Prix Final and set the Figure Skating fandom on fire. 

Posted by r/AxelsAllArround

Flair: Extra Long 

Hello again r/HobbyDrama. I’m back with another post about figure skating drama. This one is about the 2017 Grand Prix Final that ended with the controversial defeat of Viktor Nikifovor by his student-cum-fiancé Yuuri Katsuki. I’m going to discuss a lot of “fan” reactions to things, which from the most part come from skating forums like GoldenSkate, social media sites and even from some professional sports commentators. I’ll try to provide references whenever possible. 

**Viktor Nikiforov**

As you probably remember from my previous posts, Viktor Nikiforv is a figure skating legend. He revolutionized the sport in both his artistry and technical skills-- he was the first skater to land both a quadruple flip and a quadruple loop in competition. From the beginning of his career, he was a fan favorite. He’s incredibly good looking as well as super charismatic and he brought a new life to the sport with the quality of his performances. That, paired with a couple of high profile sponsorships and a minor appearance in a couple TV shows helped build a huuge fanbase. Not only was well-known even outside of the skating world but he honestly made a lot more people become fans of it. By 2015 not only had he won two Olympic gold medals but he had an impressive five-year grand slam streak. 

Of course, there were quite a lot of fans who liked to say that Viktor was always over-scored and that because the International Skating Union knew that as long as he won his fans would keep buying tickets. I think these critics were right to point out that both the ISU and the Russian federation were biased in his favor. His Program Components Score would usually be ridiculously high and occasionally he would get lower deductions than other skaters for the same type of mistakes. But most of these claims had no leg to stand on. His performances were nearly always flawless and even if he was occasionally over-scored in one element or another, the gap between him and the competition was usually veeeerry wide. Because of this, a lot of the criticism was dismissed as hate from fans of other skaters that usually didn’t stand a chance against him. 

**Katsuki Yuuri**

Katsuki Yuuri’s story was kind of the opposite of Viktor’s. He wasn’t well known for his technical skills but his artistry and well- choreographed performances usually put him on a level playing field. He also had another advantage over most skaters:his stamina (remember this one kids). While he didn’t include many difficult jumps in his program, when he did they would always be towards the end of his programs, guaranteeing him a higher score. In a world where everyone was trying to compete with Nikiforv’s four quads, this was a pretty good skill to have. 

Yuuri also seemed to crack really easily under pressure and he tended to mess up during major competitions. This had been the biggest stalling point of his career, since his performance anxiety usually cost him the qualification to the Grand Prix Final and other big championships. However, he had built [ a small but loyal fanbase ](https://archiveofourown.org/chapters/20749438#children) that both identified with his struggles and wanted him to succeed. In 2015 , he finally qualified for the Grand Prix Final. His short program was amazing, but he completely bombed his free skate and ended up in sixth place. After this, he also bombed the Japanese Nationals and immediately got disqualified from the remaining big competitions of the season. After this, it looked like Yuuri was going to retire. He left his coach in the US, moved back to Japan, and made no announcements about training again or finding a new coach.

**Coach Viktor**

What happened here is very unclear. Viktor had said in a couple of Russian interviews that he and Katsuki met at the 2015 Grand Prix Final Banquet and discussed working together/Viktor becoming his coach. I haven’t been able to find any trustworthy sources on this. But as far as we know, in 2016 Yuuri Katsuki posted a video of himself doing Viktor Nikiforov’s free skate. The video went viral, and a few days later Viktor Nikiforov suddenly announced that he would be taking some time off without indicating why or for how long. He was MIA from social media for a couple of weeks (an oddity for him), before he posted a few pictures in Japan, specifically in Yuuri Katsuki’s hometown. Of course it didn’t take long for the skating fans to connect the dots and conclude that Viktor had quit in order to become Yuuri’s coach. This was only unusual because of how sudden it seemed, and that it's the kind of career move a skater would make after they retire. Viktor made no comment about how long he’d coach Yuuri for. This led fans to believe that Viktor had been so inspired by Yuuri’s performance that he decided to drop it all off to go coach him. For the skating world, this meant two very important things: the biggest star and toughest competitor was now out of the picture for an indefinite amount of time, and he was now helping a very talented albeit inconsistent skater that could potentially surpass him, but who frequently let his nerves get the best of him. 

Skating fans were taken aback by this decision, and a lot of Viktor’s fans were very dismissive of Yuuri. Of course this doesn't’ represent _all_ of his fans, but there were a lot of posts and threads saying that Yuuri was unworthy as a skater and expressing anger over ‘Yuuri had taken Viktor away from the sport”. Other fans were interested to see how Viktor performed as a coach-- and if he’d be able to turn Yuuri into a champion.

**The 2016-2017 Skating Season**

As a skater, Yuuri objectively improved under Viktor’s coaching, both in his technical skills and his general confidence while performing. Yuuri was able to qualify once again for the GPF and he improved his own personal scores throughout the season. At the final, Yuuri not only managed to win the silver medal, but he also beat out Viktor’s world record for the highest scored Free Skate. 

Viktor had also tried to revamp Yuuri’s image a little bit, and choreographed a very sensual short program for him. It turns out that this wasn’t just an image upgrade , but probably more a reflection of how Viktor saw Yuuri . The two of them began dating at some point during the season. They infamously kissed during one of the qualifying skating events(u/contrarymarynondairy already made this post about it). The relationship only added to the drama. A lot of people immediately started shipping them , but some hardocore Viktor fans that already hated Yuuri hated him [ even more as his boyfriend ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20632535). It also looked like things were getting serious -- at the Grand Prix Final of that year they showed up in matching Golden rings which were later on revealed to be engagement rings.

That, however, wasn’t the biggest reveal of the season. After the final, Viktor announced that he would return to figure skating the following season while also continuing to coach Yuuri. Not only would Viktor be Yuuri’s coach _and_ fiancé, he would also be his competitor.

Of course, everyone and their mother were scandalized by this. Figure skating is a really tough sport and the idea seemed ludicrous to even the most talented skaters. However, the couple seemingly ignored all of these concerns and relocated to Russia so Viktor could return with his coach, Soviet skating legend Yakov Feltsman. Yuuri was able to finish the season with some of his best performances. However, a lot of fans assumed that with Viktor’s attention divided the following season, Yuuri  would return to his inconsistent performances , or that Viktor would purposely  sabotage him for an easy win.

**The 2017-2018 Skating Season**

Yuuri Katsuki started off this season on a great foot despite the concerns of many fans. He was able to finish on the podium during all of his qualifier events, something he had never managed to do. Overall, he seemed a lot more confident in his skating abilities and was overall very motivated. 

The same could not be said for Viktor. His performances weren’t _bad_ but he was making a lot of mistakes he hadn’t made since he competed in juniors . This was in many ways to be expected. He had not only taken a season off, but he did so at age 27, when most professional figure skaters are past their prime. Returning a year later after a year-long break is practically unheard of. All things considered, his performances were amazing when compared to the other skaters-- but it wasn’t Viktor Nikiforv at his prime. However he seemed to be very happy with his performance and even happier with Yuuri’s. He’d constantly post instagram photos of Yuuri at the podium with very sappy and suggestive captions. A favorite of mine was a picture of Yuuri with a medal at the NHK Trophy with the caption ‘I love it when he’s on top’. 

A lot of Viktor’s super fans were not taking this well. As I’d mentioned a few of his fans resented that Yuuri had ‘taken Viktor from the sport’. With the drastic shift in his performances, the number of fans that felt this way increased. A very popular figure skating blog even wrote a post about it, infamously saying that by putting all of his effort in training Yuuri, Viktor had become lackluster. This post was very controversial and has since been deleted but you can still find it on Wayback Machine. Not all fans agreed with this. Yuuri had built a pretty nice fan following and that only increased with the number of “shipping” fans. One of Yuuri’s fans wrote an open letter in response to that blog post, essentially saying that Viktor’s fans were exaggerating because they couldn’t bear the thought of someone beating Viktor, even if it was someone he loved. 

But it wasn’t until the Grand Prix Final came around that things really hit the fan. Up until the final, Viktor and Yuuri had not competed against each other at qualifier events. The competition was tough, but after the first day of competitions Yuuri was ahead in first place, having gotten 103.32 points for his short program, and Viktor in second with 101.51 points. This meant that for the second and final competition they would be the last two skaters to do their short programs.Viktor was the second-to-last, and his performance was magnificent. It was at the same level he had been before his break. He skated cleanly and beautifully and the crowd went completely wild for it. Viktor Nikiforov was back! He even got a two-minute standing ovation. His performance hadn’t just captivated the audience-- it put him in first place. Viktor had gotten 184.50, a new world record, that put him at a total of 286.01 , the highest score he’d received during the season. This meant trouble for Yuuri-- his previous scores for the SP had been really good , but not high enough that he could easily defeat Viktor. The lead Yuuri had also wasn’t significant enough, so in order to defeat his coach/fiancé he’d have to increase his technical element score by a lot. Considering he had a reputation as someone who cracked under pressure, most people watching assumed he would underperform and hand the gold to Viktor. One of the event commentators at the event stated that  Yuuri’s victory was unlikely . But, before the medals could be given out, Yuuri had to perform. His performance was amazing from the start, and from the moment he stepped on the ice it was clear he’d get a perfect score on his performance components. Now, everyone watching also knew that this wouldn’t be enough to beat Viktor.

This was when Yuuri pulled the rug from everyone’s feet. Remember how I’d mentioned Yuuri’s stamina? Well, Yuuri had moved his most difficult technical elements towards the end of his program, making sure he’d get a bigger score from them. And unlike previous years, Yuuri had now included four different quads in his program, which meant that this trick was even more powerful than before. The commentators were freaking out, and you could hear people in the audience actually gasping. In the end, his final result was still lower than Viktor’s (183.19 ) but his total score was 286.51, winning him the gold medal by 0.50 points. 

**The drama**

Now, you’d typically expect that such an impressive win would get the audience cheering like crazy, or at least garner some sort of positive reaction. But remember that this was _Viktor_ _Nikiforov_ , the living-legend of figure skating. The audience lost their shit, and not in a good way. From the second the scores were announced, some people began booing. There’s nothing more heartbreaking that watching poor Yuuri be confused when the booing started. The worst part about it was that Viktor seemed to be genuinely proud and happy for Yuuri. After all, Yuuri was both his skater and fiancé.

Things only got worse when the medals were given out. As the booing continued, Yuuri broke into tears and he spent the majority of the medal ceremony hiding in Viktor’s arms. People in the crowd were yelling out things like ‘cheater’ and other rude things. At one point, some of the event coordinators took the microphone and asked the crowd to calm down. Both Viktor and the bronze medalist Yuri Plisetsky seemed angry at the whole thing. After a little while, Viktor asked to borrow the microphone and told the audience that Yuuri had skated beautifully and that he deserved this win, and if they could please acknowledge his hard work respectfully. He then repeated the same message in a couple of different languages. You can see footage of the medal ceremony here(x).At the press conference following the event, Yuuri barely answered any questions. Viktor said that he was disappointed his fans couldn’t accept a fair and clean victory, especially when he was defeated by someone he loved. Yuri Plisetsky also said that “rude assholes that are only here to see one skater win should find a new fucking hobby.” 

Meanwhile, the online skating world was collapsing. ‘Grand Prix Final’ ‘Katsuki Yuuri’ and ‘Viktor Nikiforv’ were all trending topics on twitter. A handful of die-hard Viktor fans were standing by the crowd’s reaction. Others were saying that yeah, sure, it was disrespectful, but that Viktor still should have won. However, slowly but surely, a lot of fans that were more sympathetic to Yuuri started going online. Going off of Plisetsky and Viktor comments, fans started defending Yuuri’s performance, saying that it deserved the score it got and that it was also significantly better than Viktor’s. A lot of the old criticism of Viktor being over-scored made a comeback. While nothing about the claims had changed, a lot more people were willing to be critical of Viktor and his ‘rabbid, hateful fans’. Yuuri’s fanbase, which had grown exponentially in the last couple of years, was very loud in its defense of their favorite skater, writing blog posts and tweets claiming that Yuuri had constantly been mistreated by both fans and the ISU. The first claim was very much true, but there was little that could be done about it. The second claim was more serious, and it led to over 1000 people signing a complaint to the ISU for their mistreatment of Yuuri. The argument here was that the lack of clarity about the scoring system had been the main cause for the backlash, as some of the fans at the event had genuinely believed that Viktor deserved a better score. There wasn't a lot to back this up, but since it was the only point where fans could actually do something of consequence, it became the thing to rally around. This even got some mainstream media attention, especially as other skaters like Cao Bin and JJ Leroy weighedin on the matter. 

Fans also imagined that this took a toll on Viktor and Yuuri’s relationship. After the initial conference, neither one of them made comments to the press. Most worrisome of all for the shippers, Viktor Nikiforv went silent on all his social media. His twitter and instagram nearly always had some content that included Yuuri, especially after competitions. But after the final, there were absolutely zero posts. This immediately led to speculation that they had broken up. They were only seen again at their respective national competitions. Viktor was wearing his golden ring but Yuuri’s ring couldn’t be seen, which only added fuel to the rumors of a break-up. This only made the fandom wars get worse, since now it looked like the event had ruined Viktor and Yuuri’s relationship. 

**The aftermath**

Despite not technically being responsible, the  ISU issued an official public apology  to Yuuri for what had occurred at the event-- and they agreed to review some of their scoring system. Ultimately nothing changed about the scoring but now judges would need to disclose beforehand what their criteria would be. The ISU also established that any event attendants that behaved in a matter that was insulting or disrespectful to the skaters would be removed from the event. This rule is kind of impossible to enforce but it’s there in paper so they could wash their hands in the future. 

Ironically, since the whole thing went viral, Yuuri became a figure skating household name in the same vein as Viktor. A lot of people heard about the controversy and became Yuuri fans from this point onwards. 

As for Viktor and Yuuri’s relationship, the rumors about their break-up died shortly after. Yuuri’s missing ring had been due to Yuuri’s costume blocking it from view . This had been happening since the beginning of the season, but no one had read anything into it. Viktor eventually came back from his social media break saying that the two of them had taken some time to be alone and deal with what had happened privately. He also thanked all the fans that sent kind messages to Yuuri and congratulated him for his gold medal. (Never to refuse an innuendo, this post had the hashtag #IDontMindComingSecond) 

Yuuri eventually talked about how it had all been for him in an interview he gave a couple of months later. He stated that he had been heartbroken, but that ultimately he was able to ground himself by remembering he had given a great performance. He also said:  
“I was proud of myself, and Viktor was proud of me as well. Of course I was sad that so many people seemed disappointed by my victory, but I later realized that all this meant was that I had to keep proving to those people that I was better than they thought I was, and that I’m worthy of the gold medal. I hope I’ll continue to prove this to people until they believe it.” Luckily for Yuuri, he has been able to continue skating without being booed in public, even on the occasions that he’s defeated Viktor. Viktor retired after the 2018 Olympics, but he is still Yuuri’s coach and the two of them are now married and it seems that this debacle didn’t affect their relationship. 

The same cannot be said for the figure skating fans. To this day if you go to r/ViktorNikiforv or any major skating forum, you’ll find some sort of debate or discussion about the 2017 GPF.I hope you all enjoyed another look into the very dramatic world of figure skating. See you next time!

**Author's Note:**

> I really wanted to explore Yuuri and Viktor’s relationship from the internet’s perspective but I wasn’t sure how to make it work. I then got the idea that I could write a ‘post’ about them for one of my favorite subreddits (r/hobbydrama). I tried to write this following the usual post for this sub. I honestly think it requires a lot of skill to write these posts.There are two real links embedded in the story-- they’re both some of my favorite fics that are also social media- related. These works were a source of inspiration so I wanted to give them a shoutout. This is also partially inspired by the infamous Naomi Osaka and Serena Williams US Open match , or as I like to call it 'Give Naomi Osaka a hug 2k18'.


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